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MODELING THE MIRROR SYSTEM IN ACTION OBSERVATION AND
EXECUTION
by
James Bonaiuto
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(NEUROSCIENCE)
August 2010
Copyright 2010 James Bonaiuto

Both premotor and parietal cortex of the macaque brain contain mirror neurons each of which fires vigorously both when the monkey executes a certain limited set of actions and when the monkey observes some other perform a similar action. Turning to the human, we must rely on brain imaging rather than single-neuron recording. The goals of this thesis are to a) develop biologically plausible models of the mirror system and its interactions with other brain regions in grasp observation and execution, b) suggest a new role for the mirror system in self-observation and feedback-based learning, and c) present an extension of synthetic brain imaging that allows computational models to address monkey and human data.

MODELING THE MIRROR SYSTEM IN ACTION OBSERVATION AND
EXECUTION
by
James Bonaiuto
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(NEUROSCIENCE)
August 2010
Copyright 2010 James Bonaiuto